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Sunday, September 11, 2011

09112011 Sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
pleasing in Your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer!!AMEN!!

Let us pray!Jesus Christ,
You forgive us our sins every time we come and confess them.May we be inspired and forgive as much as You
have first forgiven us.For, You did not
have to forgive us, but You chose to go to the cross of Calvary to set us free
from the bondage of sin.Enable us to
forgive our brothers and sisters seventy times seven so they may feel the same
freedom we feel from You for each and every one of us saints here at
Emmanuel.AMEN.

One of the greatest biblical images that has been used countless
times is the “Prodigal Son”.We all know
the story, how the son has squandered the father’s wealth and finally returns
only wishing to be a simple field worker for his father.But the Father sees his son far away and
forgives him in his heart for all of the shame, the wrongful living and
especially for his sinfulness against him.This story simply illustrates for us today Jesus response to Peter’s
question.

Peter came and asked Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church
sins against me, how often should I forgive?”Being a good Jew, Peter knows the answer the Rabbi’s would have given
him if asked the same question, “Three times for the same sin”.So Peter is clearly expecting Jesus to follow
along with good Jewish teaching.That’s
why Peter says, “As many as seven times?”

Jesus on the other hand sees this as an opportunity to not limit
or bind his followers and us today with a certain number, but release us to a
new thought.Jesus said to him, “Not
seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.”Something for us to note, the translation of
the number here is different dependent upon the translation, our Celebrate
insert which uses the NRSV says, ‘seventy-seven times’, the King James Version,
ESV and my favorite the NASB all say, ‘seventy times seven’.No matter the translation this is a large
number.

We today could and probably would ask, isn’t that a little
extreme, ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’.But for Jesus the number is not important, it
is the concept.It is almost like Jesus
purposely used a truck load of dynamite to uproot a single corn plant.Jesus wanted the disciples and us today to
understand forgiveness should not be limited in number of times, but freed to
understand forgiveness for and especially from God is never ending and so to
should be for us as well.Our greatest
opportunity is to when wronged by our brother to continually ‘turn the other
cheek’, forgive them for their clear and manifest sins and with every
opportunity forgive as much as Jesus Christ forgives, even “seventy-seven times”
or “seventy times seven”.

Our human nature balks as this notion of forgiving.Our ‘of this world’ nature says, the person
who wronged me should be made to ‘pay’ for their sins.Having inflicted upon me sometimes the
harshest feelings of betrayal, greed and unrest, they, the person who wronged
me “I cannot forgive.”This week, at the
Max Jones fieldhouse, the Todd Becker Foundation told the story that clearly
models this worldly notion of “I cannot forgive.”You see Todd Becker was killed in a tragic
car accident in which the driver who was legally intoxicated and his passenger
in the front seat walked away from the accident, but Todd, though legally
drunk, buckled into the back seat of the car was killed.Todd’s brother Keith, was this person, ‘blaming
the driver of the car’, not wanting to forgive him.It was not until a Pastor said to him, Keith,
you have to forgive the driver of that car.Until you do that you will continue to build up the wall of sin that
separates you from your Savior.What
that Pastor also said to him, was he had to forgive himself.You see, it was Keith his own brother that
had led Todd down this ‘wide path’ to destruction.Keith had given him his first girly magazine,
given him his first drink, introduced him to hard alcohol and given him his
first drag of marijuana.Now Keith’s
brother Todd was laying in a coffin and the person who had driven the car was
spending his Senior year of high school in a jail cell.

Jesus is telling Peter and us today, we are just like
Keith.We need to forgive ‘seventy times
seven’ times, not only the people who have hurt us, but also and especially
ourselves.This forgiveness we find in
what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross of Calvary.Jesus Christ came to set Keith and us free from
our sins which bind us daily and free all of us saints here at Emmanuel.AMEN.